Authors: Mary Daheim
“They had a daughter. Maybe there'd been some news of her. Ah. Cupcake is secured.”
“Good.” I paused, just in case the blasted bird tried to shoot his way out of the cage. “I asked Dean about the daughter when I reinterviewed him. He said he still had no idea where she was.”
“But perhaps Crystal did,” Vida suggested.
“Could be. Are you trying to find a motive in all this?”
“It comes to mind,” Vida said.
“Milo's already got too many motives,” I pointed out.
“No,” Vida countered. “Milo has too many suspects. He only has two motives. Nat Cardenas's and Aaron Conley's. There's nothing I've heard that suggests Victor Dimitroff has a motive.”
“Jealousy,” I said, “of Aaron. He and Crystal were still married. Remember how Aaron lashed out at Victor after the funeral?”
“Victor strikes me as someone who cares only about his tuba.”
“Not his tuba so much as his musical compositions,” I said, going to the front window to see if Tom was coming back yet. “Honestly, I can't tell with him. I can see Victor easily enraged, though, and possibly violent.”
Vida didn't agree, and then proceeded to read my mind. “Where's Tommy?”
“He went for a walk.”
“Oh.” Another pause. “Weren't you thrilled to see him?”
There was no sign of Tom outside, just two kids pulling a sled along the quiet street. “Of course. I almost passed out.”
“Do you have plans?” Vida sounded eager.
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
“It's complicated.” I sighed. “I'll explain later.”
“No, you won't. Explain now.”
I collapsed onto the sofa. “Tom's daughter Kelsey has moved in with him. She's having a baby and the father is a drug addict or a drug dealer or both. Tom can't make plans. He has to take care of Kelsey. When the baby's ready for college, check back with me.”
“It's not as bad as all that,” Vida asserted. “The daughter—Kelsey?—won't want to live with her father forever.”
“Oh, no?” I shot back. “After this experience, she's probably off men for the rest of her life. She'll never marry, and Tom won't want her to take a job because he'll feel that she should be a full-time mom. It would have
been nice if he'd felt that way about me twenty-six years ago.”
“You're working yourself into a lather,” Vida scolded. “You don't know anything of the sort. Do be patient. Sandra hasn't been dead for a year.”
“Vida, I've been patient for a quarter of a century. If it's not Sandra, it's Kelsey. If it's not Kelsey, then it'll be his son, Graham. Or a crisis with the newspaper business or another San Francisco earthquake or some damned thing. I'm resigned. Forget it.”
“Would you say yes?”
The unexpected question caught me up short. “That's beside the point.”
“Hardly. Would you?” There was a dogged edge to Vida's voice.
“Don't ask,” I replied in a sulky tone. “I can't possibly answer that question unless I know what I'm getting into.”
“You know,” Vida said accusingly, but she backed off. “It's a good thing Tommy is here. You're going to need him. The word is out.”
“What word?”
“About Milo suspecting that you killed Crystal.”
I made a face into the receiver. “How could it be? Milo was still here an hour ago. He couldn't possibly have spread the word so fast.”
“True,” Vida allowed. “But I could.”
First Presbyterian Church had what was called a Telephone Tree to inform the faithful of deaths, births, and convalescences. As a lifelong member of the congregation, Vida perched on top of the tree, ready to spread the news.
I held my head. “Vida. You didn't.” Then I started to
laugh. “But of course you did. It makes perfect, infuriating sense.”
“You couldn't expect Milo to do it on his own,” she said, bridling. “Especially on a weekend with the weather so bad. Crystal has been dead for over a week. People are starting to question Milo's competence. Not to mention that so many elderly and infirm are housebound in this snow and are afraid that the killer might be out to get
them.”
“Not a chance,” I retorted, though small-town paranoia was annoyingly familiar to me. “Did you volunteer or did Milo ask you?”
“I volunteered,” Vida responded indignantly. “I called the sheriff as soon as I got home. Then I got busy. It only takes a few calls when you're at the top of the Tree.”
I wished I'd been a very big bear and Vida had been up a very small tree. “Vida—” I began, then stopped. “Never mind. I guess somebody had to do it. I still wish I'd refused to go along with this stupid stunt. I'm not even sure it'll work.”
Naturally, Vida felt differently. We argued a bit, but I knew that trying to change her mind was useless. I didn't even bother pointing out that I thought Milo had gotten his bright idea as some sort of weird retaliation for Tom's presence under my roof and in my bed.
I'd just hung up when I saw two figures approach my house. Neither of them was Tom. They had almost reached the porch when I recognized Melody andThad Eriks.
Amid much stamping of feet, they apologized for intruding. Curious, I showed them inside and offered coffee.
“No, thanks, Ms. Lord,” Melody said, still looking apologetic. “We've come with a request.” She turned to her brother. “Thad?”
Thad cleared his throat. “We heard some really bad news this afternoon. Somebody called my mother and
said that Sheriff Dodge was going to arrest you for Aunt Crystal's murder.”
Even in the aftermath of a blizzard, news travels fast in Alpine and reaches out beyond the Presbyterians. I flopped down on the sofa and indicated that Melody and Thad should also sit. They declined and remained standing stiff as a pair of snowmen.
“We shouldn't be here,” Thad declared, with a nervous glance at the broken window. “We know it could be dangerous, but we let Sheriff Dodge know where we were headed.”
Watching Melody's scared wide eyes and noting that Thad's usual self-confidence was in abeyance, I realized there might be an amusing side to being an alleged murderess.
“You're very brave,” I said with just a touch of sarcasm. “What prompted such audacity?”
The siblings exchanged quick looks, perhaps seeking mutual encouragement. “You used to live in Portland, right?” It was Thad who spoke up.
“Yes,” I replied. “For a long time. I moved to Alpine about nine years ago.”
“You knew Aunt Crystal there, right?” It was Thad again, apparently the official family interrogator.
“Did I?” Until Thad mentioned it, I'd never made such a connection. While living in Portland, I wouldn't have known Crystal from the queen of the annual Rose Festival.
“That's how we figure it,” Thad said. “You were still there when she married Aaron. How come she didn't divorce him?”
“Maybe she still loved him,” I suggested.
“No,” Melody put in. “She never did. It was an infatuation. She should have just had an affair and let it go at that.”
“So,” I queried, “why do
you
think she stayed married to him?”
Again, brother and sister exchanged glances. “It looked better, staying married,” Thad finally said.
I frowned at the pair. “How do you mean?”
“You
know,” Thad said, his jaw thrust out.
I didn't, of course, but I decided to pretend. “Your aunt wasn't a conventional woman.”
“Exactly.” Thad brightened, as if I'd said something brilliant. “You knew her a lot better than we did. The problem is, everything would have been okay if she'd divorced Aaron like we thought she had.”
“And why did you think that?” I asked.
“Somewhere along the line,” Thad began, “like maybe five years ago, she wrote to my mother to say she'd separated from Aaron and was moving, so she had a new address. I didn't pay much attention at the time, I'd just started college up at Western in Bellingham, and I guess Mom and Dad figured Aunt Crystal got a divorce. We didn't know she hadn't until after she got killed.”
“It was really upsetting,” Melody said, her gaze straying to the window. Maybe she was hoping the sheriff would cruise by. “It doesn't seem fair that Aaron gets anything. He meant nothing to Aunt Crystal.”
“He meant enough that she let him come here and live off of her,” I pointed out.
“That's because she was so softhearted,” Thad said.
It wasn't the way I'd have ever described Crystal, but I didn't say so. “It's a matter of law,” I explained. “This is a community-property state. As long as they were still married at the time Crystal died, Aaron is entitled to everything she had except for the bequests she made to the two of you in her will.”
“That's our point,” Thad said earnestly. “That's why we're here. We're sure Aunt Crystal never intended for
Aaron to get any of it. We think she made a second will just before she died.”
Candor was my only option. “I don't know. Have you asked Marisa Foxx? I understand she made out the first one for your aunt.”
“I called her right after the funeral,” Thad said. “Ms. Foxx insisted there wasn't a second will, or if there was, she hadn't made it for Aunt Crystal. Anyway, she said that if she had, it'd probably not be a new one, but a codicil.”
“We thought that since you knew Aunt Crystal from way back,” Melody said, sounding pettish, “you might know what she'd done about the will. After all, you were the last person to see her alive.”
I bit back a denial. “I don't know anything about it. I really don't understand why you think there is a second will or a codicil. Your aunt didn't expect to die, you know.”
“She didn't expect Aaron to show up, either,” Thad declared. “That's why we think she would have changed everything.”
“I think you're wrong,” I said.
Brother and sister started for the door, though they didn't turn their backs on me. “You ought to know,” Melody said in a sullen tone.
“No,” I asserted, standing up, “I don't know. And if I were you, I'd think twice about changes in your aunt's will. What if she left everything to her daughter, Amber? What if she cut you both out of your inheritance?”
“Never,” Thad shouted. “We were the children she wished she'd had instead of that weirdo, Amber.”
Melody was looking pugnacious. “Amber ran away a long time ago, about the time I started high school. Nobody knows what happened to her and nobody cares.
Anyway, Aunt Crystal wouldn't have left her a dime. Amber was a narrow-minded little bitch.”
“How do you know that?” I demanded, trying to look menacing.
“Because Aunt Crystal told us all about her rotten daughter,” Melody replied, backpedaling in step with her brother. “It wouldn't surprise me if she was the one who killed her mother.”
Apparently, my killer act had bombed, at least with the Eriks offspring. Or maybe they preferred to believe that their cousin had done the deed. That would certainly sew up the inheritance for them if Amber ever resurfaced and took the matter to court.
As Melody and Thad skittered away, they almost collided with Tom on the plowed path to the street.
“Who's that?” he asked, puffing a little as he came through the door.
While Tom eased himself out of his boots, I explained, including how it felt to have someone look at you as if you might have killed another human being.
“Did you scare them away?” He grinned as he sat down next to me on the sofa and held my hands. His fingers were like ice.
“Well,” I began, “that's the funny thing. Melody and Thad acted nervous, but there wasn't much else there. Either they're too shallow to comprehend what it's like to talk to a killer, or they know I really didn't do it.”
“You think one of them did?” Tom asked, wiggling his toes in his thermal socks.
I grimaced. “I don't know. I don't think so. But I have to wonder why they're so insistent about another will or a codicil. If such a thing exists, Marisa Foxx didn't draw it up. If she didn't do it, who did? And wouldn't Crystal have kept a copy? Milo never mentioned finding anything of the sort.”
Tom looked puzzled. “You say these kids insisted Crystal wouldn't leave anything to Aaron? Why not, if she was helping him financially?”
“I don't know, because I didn't know Crystal. Melody and Thad did, if briefly. Another thing,” I added as three people passed by on foot and swiveled in the direction of my picture window, “those kids don't think much of their runaway cousin.”
“The missing daughter?” Tom leaned back against the sofa. “How come?”
“I don't know that, either. I suppose Aunt Crystal told them tales. Melody and Thad are a couple of gullible, smalltown products,” I explained. “Kinship is very important—unless you're in a family feud. I figured that poor Amber was driven away by her ornery mother. But the Eriks kids aren't going to see it that way, not when they get the bulk of her estate.”
For a few moments, Tom was silent. “Melody and Thad don't know who killed Crystal. I'll bet they really don't believe you did it. They may have come by to see how you'd react.”
A couple of cars crept along Fir. I had the feeling they, too, were rubbernecking, out to see what a real live murderess looked like. As if they didn't know, having seen me around town for years.
“None of it makes sense,” I said. “As for drawing conclusions that I must have known Crystal in Portland, I suppose that makes more sense. If I'd actually killed the wench, we might have had a history.”
Tom lifted my chin. “You're bitter.”
“I'm pissed. At Milo and Vida, for getting me into this mess.”
Tom gave a shake of his head. “I don't know, Emma. It sounds to me as if it's working. You've already had a
couple of callers. Maybe you can just sit here and have the whole mystery unfold in your living room.”
“Don't be a smart-ass, Tom.” I looked outside as a pickup stopped by my mailbox. A gangly man with a scruffy beard got out and planted a sign at the edge of the street. “Oh, shit!” I started for the door.
Tom was right behind me. In fact, he pushed me aside and headed into the yard, shouting for the man to stop. Unfortunately, Tom hadn't put on dry shoes. He took ten steps before his thermal socks began to freeze on the path. Tom swore while the man in the pickup truck drove off, honking his horn.
“Hand me my boots,” Tom called. “I'm going to get that sign.”